hacker hijacks xbox, sends swat to home

from kprc: It looked like the scene out of a video game; and indeed an Xbox was behind a SWAT team invading a suburban Florida home. The SWAT invasion turned out to be a hoax, but police aren’t laughing. The family at the butt of the joke, on the other hand, can't tell their tale without a bit of a smile. "I come out of my room and they've got their guns pointed at me and stuff," said Hunter Gelinas. "I open my door and I had the whole SWAT team down in the front door. I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm going to die.'"

It turned out that a hacker had gotten access to Hunter's Xbox and put in a call to police. His mother, Daleann Gelinas, said that the hacker used "a handicapped line, saying that Hunter had been stabbed and the parents and other people being held hostage at the house." Neighbors watched in awe as police poured down their street. "They all had their guns up like they were ready in case anyone was going to fire on them," said neighbor Sam Murphy. "When I heard it was a hoax, it kind of made more sense because I figured with this neighborhood, nothing ever really happens here."

Officers took electronics and the hacked Xbox in a search for the Canadian hacker who has yet to be identified. Experts said that the hoax reveals frightening flaws in online security. "There is nothing there to stop them. Once they gain accessibility to the machine, they can do whatever they want as long as they have the capability and knowledge to do it," said computer expert Neil Wexell. Wexell said that the easiest way to prevent hackers from gaining access is to keep gaming systems offline when not in use.

2/17 defcon: cyber-coup, backdoor & track more

cyber-attack hits canadian government computers*
report: egypt shut down net with big switch, not phone calls*
voice of america uses social media to aid foreign dissent*
surveillance footage & code clues indicate stuxnet hit iran*
cia head panetta warns of possible cyber-pearl harbor*
lynn urges partnership against cyber threat*
dod talks up plans to deploy cybercommandos 3.0*
video: hillary announces expanded US cyber-coup campaign*
US intelligence officials concerned about cyber attack*
'kill switch' internet bill alarms privacy experts*
cyberwar issues likely to be addressed only after a catastrophe*
fema loses official lesson reports on katrina, floods, fires*
feds seize 18 more domains in piracy crackdown*
fbi to announce significant new wiretap push:
backdoors galore in everything from skype to bittorrent*
online 'do not track' bill introduced in congress*
internet searches beginning to be used as evidence in trials*
obama/holder case against assange dribbles away*
jobs, schmidt & zuckerberg meet with obama in san francisco*
reminder: facebook & google are cia fronts*

corps & govts: violating privacy with legal ease

google this: the price of violating privacy
from national post: Google Inc. violated Canadian privacy law by collecting personal information from unsecured wireless networks across the country for its Street View service, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner said Tuesday.

“Our investigation shows that Google did capture personal information - and, in some cases, highly sensitive personal information such as complete emails,” said Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, in a statement. “This incident was a serious violation of Canadians’ privacy rights,” she said.

Noting that thousands of Canadians were likely affected, Ms. Stoddart said personal information collected by Google’s iconic Street View cars included complete emails, email addresses, user names and passwords, names and residential telephone numbers and addresses. Some particularly sensitive information was also inadvertently captured, such as a list of people suffering from certain medical conditions complete with their full names and contact information...

Ms. Stoddart has given the world’s largest search engine a deadline of Feb. 1 to delete all offending Canadian data. She said her office will allow Google to keep any data relevant to ongoing legal proceedings as long as the data are secured and access is restricted. The company, which has already secured and restricted access to the Canadian payload data, is currently facing a number of lawsuits in the United States related to its Street View data-collection methods.

judge clears captcha-breaking case for criminal trial

eu may propose criminal sanctions, fines for data privacy cases
from bloomberg: European Union regulators may propose expanded criminal penalties to enforce data protection rules that limit what companies and governments can do with personal information. People should also have the right to have their details deleted and to remove lists of friends, photos or medical records, according to a European Commission document obtained by Bloomberg. The proposals may also make it easier for data protection authorities and consumer groups to file lawsuits over privacy breaches.

Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are among several Internet companies that have come under European scrutiny for possible privacy breaches. Data-protection officials have criticized Facebook, the largest social-networking site, for putting users’ personal information and privacy at risk with recent policy changes. It’s “essential to have effective provisions on remedies and sanctions” including “criminal sanctions in case of serious data protection violations,” the paper from the EU’s executive agency says.

Privacy violations can be punished with jail time in Italy, where a court in February sentenced three Google officials to six-month terms, which were suspended. They were held responsible after a group of Turin school students filmed themselves bullying an autistic classmate and uploaded a clip to Google Video in 2006.

military asks media to omit leaked documents - as pentagon braces for release of 400,000 iraq files on wikileaks

'cyber storm iii' tests US on cyber attack

stuxnet & cyberstorm3 are unrelated, nothing to see here...
from defencetalk: US keyboard warriors were doing battle Tuesday with a simulated cyberattack on government and private computer networks that undermines basic trust in the Internet. The "Cyber Storm III" exercise involves participants from seven US government departments, including the Pentagon, 11 US states, 60 private companies and 12 international partners.

The biennial exercise is being staged by the Department of Homeland Security and is the first test of the new National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center based in an office building in this Washington suburb. The NCCIC booted up in October 2009 to serve as the coordinating center for US cybersecurity operations and houses US government computer experts and their private sector counterparts under one roof.

Briefing reporters ahead of "Cyber Storm III," Brett Lambo, the director of DHS's Cyber Exercise Program, stressed that the exercise, which is expected to last three days, is "completely simulated... We're not attacking any real networks," Lambo said. "We're not taking down a network. We're not injecting any real malware."

The thousands of participants in the exercise will receive more than 1,500 "injects" of simulated events that they will have to react to as unknown adversaries seek to exploit known vulnerabilities in cyber infrastructure...

The international partners taking part in the exercise are from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland.

update: millions of comps hit by virus across china*
'cyber storm iii' simulates large-scale cyberattack*
dhs tests cyber response plan in global drill*
cyber attack on iranian industry appears well-funded*
iran says no virus hit nuclear systems*
in a computer worm, a possible biblical clue*

defcon 9/9: sex, spies & vulnerabilities

craigslist unexpectedly pulls adult services listings*
cia money behind wi-fi positioning system, or wps*
google pays $8.5m to settle buzz privacy invasion suit*
video: google creepier & more omnipresent with 'instant search'*
court ok's warrantless cell-site tracking*
nsa: US must secure the internet*
dhs cybersecurity watchdogs miss 100s of vulnerabilities on their own network*
cyber task force passes mission to cyber command*
cyber warfare: US military hackers & internet spies*
canada unveils new speed bump: optical illusion of a child*

defcon 6/9: wikileaked, registered & artificials

US intel analyst arrested in wikileaks video probe*
bbc: wikileaks site unfazed by arrest of US army 'source'*
video: state dept anxious about diplomatic secrets bradley manning allegedly downloaded*
wikileaks was launched with documents intercepted from tor*
wikileaks & julian paul assange in 'the new yorker'*
wikileaks denies tor hacker eavesdropping gave site its start* at&t leak leaves US apple ipad owners at risk*
bill gives feds 'emergency’ powers to secure civilian nets*
dhs would be cyber power center under lieberman/collins proposal*
nsa chief: US carefully monitoring military computer networks for sabotage*
wireless signals to be jammed in canada for g8 summit*
top US commander in iraq raises internet concerns*
new worries emerge about internet monitoring*
calls increase for govt to regulate net journalists & bloggers*
michigan considers law to register journalists*
lawyers claim google wi-fi sniffing 'is not an accident'*
chinese net addicts stage mutiny at boot camp*
ceo of firm that made $100m selling 'scareware' was a fugitive*
6 astronauts begin 520-day mock flight to mars*
approaching space object 'artificial, not asteroid' says nasa*
more active sun means nasty solar storms ahead*
ancient meteorite discovered in oregon*